Here’s a good article from the Chronicle on teaching an effective first day of class. It’s fairly long but has a lot of useful details and illustrative examples (one of them being for a composition course).

Syllabus day. That magical time when professors read the syllabus at students until their eyes glaze over. No wonder they never remember anything from the syllabus or feel motivated to look back at it ever again.

Over the past couple of years, I have tried to make syllabus day more interactive. I’ve told students to highlight specific policies that they knew they’d personally need to remember (for example, late policies for those who struggle with punctuality). I told them to take notes, reframe parts in their own words, jot down questions as I go through it with them. I wanted to show them that the syllabus was a text like any other we would read in our class and to have them start practicing active reading skills on day one. Although this lesson was more helpful in engaging students compared to when I simply read through the syllabus quickly (boring even myself), I could tell I was still losing their attention.

This year I tried something different.

Inspired by Lisa Blankenship’s professional development last semester, when we worked in groups to examine language on a syllabus that might excluded some students, I asked my students to critique my syllabus in a similar fashion.Continue reading →

After six years as the director of MSU’s First Year Writing Program, Jessica Restaino is moving on (to take over as director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program).

Henry Margenau and Dayna Arcurio interviewed Jessica for their podcast, The Write Mode, about subjects such as (quoting from their website): “What does she see as the most important work she’s done? What lies ahead for the FYW Program and the Writing Studies Department? … multimodality, running a writing program, eating muffins, and all kinds of stuff.”

This semester, one of my comp 1 classes requested a rubric. I utilize the guidelines set forth by FYW, but the only other rubrics I have created and used were for multimodal assignments. When these students requested a rubric, they gave answers such as “I am an adult student who hasn’t been in school in a while and a rubric will help me guide my writing” or “my high school teacher used one so I am used to them.” They made valid points, and I believe that when a student requests a tool that will help them, if it is in my power, I should give it to them.

I did what any educator does—I read articles about rubric construction, read rubrics from community colleges through Ivy League schools, and came to, what I thought, was a happy median. Proud of this creation that I spent hours stitching together, I presented it to the class for agreement. All was settled then—I was using a rubric and they cleared the final draft for use.

Then, I graded the first batch of essays. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I wasn’t just disappointed with the quality of writing; I was disappointed in the grades I was giving. It was there, spelled out with math, but these grades were horrendous. And, I felt terrible writing them in. I could hear the sighs of freshman souls escaping and hopelessness seeping in…yes, it was that bad. But, like any other educator, I brainstormed to find a solution. That solution is outlined below; please feel free to use any/all of it. Is it the “right” answer? I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer when it comes to these sort of dilemmas, but this helped my students. Continue reading →

I want to say how pleased I am to be here with you today, and I have to say that from my perspective you have a huge amount to celebrate.

— Not that you didn’t before.

— Your writing program has always been unusually strong, as evidenced by the program’s recognition with a CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence, the highest form of recognition that CCCC offers.

But as you know better than I do, in the past few years you’ve negotiated the rocky bureaucratic shoals of academic restructuring. Fortunately, the movement of the writing program out of the English department into its own freestanding Department of Writing Studies was something that you wanted to do. And now here you are with your own departmental identity, a new chair, a lively and responsive curriculum, and strong faculty development opportunities. In preparing for this workshop today, I read a number of articles in your blog “Deep Down in the Classroom,” and I was impressed.

So kudos to all of you! And I want to be sure to tell you that I, the other coauthors of Everyone’s An Author, and Marilyn (whose vision for EAA sustained and inspired us) are honored that you chose to include our textbook as a primary text for your course. Thank you for including EAA in your curriculum.